


Slytherin!Harry and the Sorcerer's Stone

by TheQuantumQueer



Series: Slytherin!Harry [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Slytherin!Harry, sorting AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 1997-06-26
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1252282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQuantumQueer/pseuds/TheQuantumQueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the following passage hadn't happened?</p><p>"The door of compartment slid open and the youngest red-headed boy came in. 'Anyone sitting there?' he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry. 'Everywhere else is full.'"</p><p>This is a Harry Potter AU in which Ron found a seat and didn't meet Harry on the train. This changes things just enough to result in Harry getting sorted into Slytherin, and the circumstances of every major event being tweaked accordingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Boy who Lived

The exact same as JKR's first chapter. Just go read that.


	2. The Vanishing Glass

Seriously, go read the original. I'll wait.


	3. The Letters From No One

Still no changes so far.


	4. The Keeper of the Keys

We're getting closer, but this part of the story is still JKR's.


	5. Diagon Alley

Almost there.


	6. The Journey From Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The beginning of the chapter is identical. The last bit of the original that I leave intact is as follows]
> 
> The train began to move. Harry saw the boys' mother waving and their sister, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.
> 
> Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner. Houses flashed past the window. Harry felt a great leap of excitement. He didn't know what he was going to, but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.

Before long, the train had put the city behind it, leaving Harry with nothing to look at but fields of livestock that, while they were a somewhat pleasant view in their own right, made a poor distraction from the growing anxiety in the pit of his stomach. 

That pit turned out to be caused by hunger as much as by nerves, when Harry’s stomach gave a massive rumble, reminding him rather forcefully that the Dursleys had neglected to feed him that morning, asserting that if he got hungry he could simply “appear some food for himself and his bloody bird.” As if on cue, there was a sudden noise outside his compartment, and the door slid back to reveal an incredibly cheerful woman with a food trolley. “Anything off the cart, dear?” she asked.

Having never before had money at all, much less a surplus, Harry was more than eager to stuff himself to the brim with any number of sweets that had taunted him from Dudley’s pockets, but she didn’t have any of the things he asked about. She did, however, have a myriad of things Harry had never even heard of and was suddenly anxious to try, so he bought some of everything.

“That’ll be eleven sickles, seven knuts, dearie,” the woman informed him.

Harry, who could not for the life of him remember how the silver and bronze coins worked, stared blankly and his palm full of money for almost a full minute before giving up and handing over two of the gold ones. “Is this enough?”

“Of course, dear, let me get your change,” she replied.

“No need,” Harry insisted. “You’ve more than earned the tip by not staring at my forehead this whole time.”

He instantly regretted this comment, as her eyes flicked up to his scar, noticing it for the first time, and widened immensely.

“Of course,” she managed, and with obvious difficulty keeping herself collected, she hastily left.

Many of his purchases left him confused as to what they were, let alone how to eat them, but several seemed straightforward enough. He tried a small handful of some jelly beans that were curiously marked “Every Flavor,” but quickly abandoned them after getting a mouthful of an atrocious combination of what tasted like toast, coconut, baked beans, strawberries, curry, grass, coffee, and sardines, which was mercifully overpowered at the end by a blast of pepper.

He decided to skip the bubble gum and licorice wands as well, having imagined rather forcefully the sorts of things that might happen if he should accidentally wave one of the wands or blow a bubble, and opted instead for a chocolate frog which, though somewhat disturbingly shaped and somewhat more disturbingly animate, appeared to just be chocolate, which seemed safe enough.

It escaped.

As he wrangled his wayward candy, he noticed a small pentagonal card amidst the discarded wrapper. Biting off the frog’s head to make it stop squirming (which worked, much to Harry’s relief), he reached over and picked it up. On it was a picture of an old man who, with his long silver hair and beard, his crooked nose, and his half-moon glasses, fit Harry’s idea of what a wizard looked like much more neatly than any actual wizard he had met so far.

Turning it over, he read:

Albus Dumbledore  
CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS

Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times,  
Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the  
dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the  
twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy  
with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore  
enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.

Harry turned the card back over to look at the picture again, but much to his surprise, Professor Dumbledore was nowhere to be found. Harry began to wonder whether he would ever get the hang of this new world.

By the time Harry had finished all the food he was brave enough to try (there were some small black candies that had tried to bite his fingers and successfully kept him at bay), the view out the window had changed. The orderly fields were now gone, replaced with forests and rolling hills, interspersed with twisting rivers.

There was a knock on the compartment door, and the boy Harry had seen with his grandmother on the platform came in. Up close, he looked a bit like Dudley, especially in proportions, though this boy was shorter. He looked like he had been crying, and like he could start again at any moment.

“Sorry,” he asked, “but have you seen a toad at all?”

Harry shook his head, but before he could say anything, the boy began to wail in a way that reinforced Harry’s Dudley-esque impression of him. “I’ve lost him! He keeps getting away from me!”

“He’ll turn up,” Harry reassured him.

“I suppose. Well if you see him…” The boy left, looking somehow more miserable than he had when he came in.

Harry was pleased to have had some interaction with someone his own age for the first time in hours, but he wished it had been less depressing, and possibly less brief. He settled in for another who-knew-how-long of staring out the window by himself.

Not two minutes later, however, the compartment door slid open again, this time without a knock. Harry jumped slightly and turned to see the same boy again, this time standing slightly behind a rather intense looking girl with lots of bushy brown hair and somewhat large front teeth.

“Have you seen a toad?” she asked, sounding every bit as forcefully determined as she looked. “Neville’s lost one.”

“Sorry, no. He was just in here asking a moment ago,” Harry replied.

The girl looked disapprovingly around the compartment at the myriad wrappers Harry had strewn about him. “Not that you could really tell in all this mess, could you?” she asked, kicking a mostly-eaten Pumpkin Pasty to the side.

Harry was beginning to think the odds were slim of him finding anyone at Hogwarts he would get along with.

“I would so,” he said, more harshly than he meant to. “It wasn’t this messy to begin with, and there’s no way a toad could have gotten in unless one of you had brought it with you.”

“Then I suppose you conjured all this food yourself? Unfortunately that’s impossible, given that food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. You can summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, or you can increase the amount if you’ve already got some, but those are quite advanced spells that you hardly look old enough to have mastered. I’ve learned all our course books by heart, you see. I’ve also tried some basic spells, and they’ve all worked for me, so I suppose I’ll give this a go.”

“Harry understood barely half of what she said, and not just because she was speaking so quickly that his mind had trouble keeping up. Just as he was wrapping his head around the fact that someone had voluntarily read coursebooks, he noticed her pointing her wand at a pile of wrappers.

“ _Scourgify,_ ” she said, far more slowly and clearly than any word she had uttered so far.

The pile of wrappers exploded.

“Well, I suppose no one’s perfect. I hadn’t tried that spell before, and we’re slated to learn it later in the year, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll just have to wait for Professor Flitwick to teach it to us. Oh, I can’t wait to meet Professor Flitwick. He’s part goblin, you know. I’m Hermione Granger, by the way. Who’re you?”

Relieved to finally hear something other than her voice, Harry told her his name.

“Are you really?” Hermione began again. “I know all about you, of course. I got a few extra books for background reading, and you’re in _Modern Magical History_ and _The Rise and Fall f the Dark Arts_ and _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century_.”

“Am I?” Harry asked, thoroughly dazed by this point.

“Goodness, didn’t you know? I’d have found out everything I could if it was me,” Hermione continued. “Do either of you know what house you’ll be in?” she asked, seeming to finally remember Neville, who looked to Harry as though he, too, wished Hermione would stop talking. “I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn’t be too bad… Anyway, we’d better go and look for Neville’s toad. You had better change. I expect we’ll be there soon.”

She left, taking a sobbing Neville with her and leaving Harry in a compartment that was now comfortably silent except for the sound of the train. He didn’t know which house he would be put in or how the sorting was done, and he was beginning not to care. If anything, he was now hoping slightly for Hufflepuff, as it was the only one that hadn’t been extolled by someone obnoxious.

After a while, the compartment door slid open yet again. There was no knock this time either, but neither Neville nor Hermione was there. Instead, it was the boy from Madam Malkin’s, flanked by two others Harry didn’t recognize. The blond boy in the middle appeared to be decidedly more interested in Harry than he had been in Diagon Alley.

“Is it true?” he demanded. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”

“Yes,” said Harry, who was less than thrilled to see the boy again, and was instead looking at the other two. They looked cruel in a way Dudley could never have been, and stronger, but they were still very thickset. The way the blond boy stood between them, they resembled bodyguards.

“These are Crabbe and Goyle,” the blond one said dismissively in a blatant attempt to bring Harry’s focus back to himself. “My name’s Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. And I believe we may have gotten off on the wrong foot in the shop. If I had realized who you were, I would have known how desperately lonely you must be. After all, everyone knows that you were raised by those filthy muggles, and that you don’t have any decent friends. Please accept my apology for my earlier rudeness and allow me to be your first.” He offered his hand.

Harry had to admit to himself that Draco made a much better second impression than a first one, so he shook his hand, but he had a strong feeling that this was all a play to get hold of Harry’s unwanted popularity, and said nothing.

“Would you mind if we sat with you? Some blubbering loudmouth in the compartment next to ours lost his toad and is upset about it for some unfathomable reason. Probably going to be a Hufflepuff, that one,” Draco said.

“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Harry muttered. He didn’t much like this boy, and his friends scared him a bit, but he had been right about Harry being lonely.

Draco looked at the bench beside Harry, then at Goyle, who promptly stepped forward and swept it clear so Draco could sit down, then sat with Crabbe on the opposite side of the compartment.

Draco quickly relaxed into the space Goyle had cleared, and looked at Harry. “So are you excited to be back?” he asked, popping one of the flavored beans into his mouth.

Harry was glad to finally have someone to talk to, but Draco would not have been Harry’s first choice of companion, nor would Harry have been Harry’s first choice of topic.

Realizing there was no polite way to tell these boys to go away and that being impolite may have found him on the receiving end of a fist, Harry answered. “More excited to leave, really. I don’t feel like I’m coming back, so much as learning about this world for the first time.”

Harry was shocked by how much better he felt, having said these words aloud. His relief must have been visible, because Draco nodded knowingly.

“Yes, I would imagine so,” he intoned. “I can only imagine what it must be like, having everyone treat you like a celebrity while you’re just trying to figure out how to get by. Is it true that muggle money uses partial units? How do they keep it all straight?”

“Well,” Harry said, happy to be on a new topic and to have found someone who seemed to understand his plight, “it’s actually quite simple. There are 100 pence in a pound, so we- I mean they just put the number of pounds, then a dot, and then the number of pence.”

Draco laughed. “That’s so incredibly boring!” he crowed. “Here I was thinking the muggles were working in some bizarrely unfathomable system that would only make sense to them, and here I find out that they just can’t work figures well enough to use primes like decent folk! Oh, that’s too rich!”

Before Harry could interrupt and say that the muggle system made sense and that he was having trouble with the magic money himself, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the train would be arriving in five minutes and instructing them to leave their luggage on the train to be taken to the school separately.

“We’d better go get changed,” Draco said, snapping at Crabbe, who was rooting through Harry’s trash for anything left uneaten. “I’m sure we’ll be close friends soon enough.”

He left Harry alone to change. Once he had put on his robes, he looked out the window again, to see mountains and thick forests against a quickly deepening purple sky. The train seemed to finally be slowing, just as the conductor had said.

As the train came to a stop, Harry opened the door to his compartment and found himself swept into the corridor and out onto the platform by what appeared to be the entire student body.

“Firs’ years! Firs’ years this way!” called a familiar voice. Harry turned to see Hagrid standing over the crowd with a lantern and made his way in that direction.

“All right there, Harry?” Hagrid beamed when he saw him before returning to his call of “Firs’ years follow me! Any more firs’ years? Mind yer step, now! Firs’ years follow me!”

Minding their steps turned out to be slightly less straightforward than it sounded, as Hagrid led them down a slippery stone staircase in pitch darkness. Nobody spoke much, but Harry heard Neville sniff once or twice.

“Jus’ round this bend here, yeh’ll get yer firs’ sight o’ Hogwarts,” Hagrid called back to them.

Almost immediately, the entire group let out a chorus of oohs and aahs as the path opened abruptly and they found themselves on the shore of a large dark lake. A mountain on the opposite side lifted a huge castle with too many turrets and towers to count.

“No more’n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a flotilla of rowboats that Harry noticed seemed to be missing their oars. Harry looked for Draco but didn’t see him, and instead joined Neville and Hermione and the redheaded boy from the platform, whose name he didn’t remember, and who reintroduced himself as Ron Weasley.

“Everyone in?” shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself. “Right then: FORWARD!”

Suddenly all the boats lurched forward in unison across the glassy still lake toward the looming castle. No one said a word as they approached the cliff below it, and even Neville seemed to have momentarily forgotten his toad.

“Heads down!” Hagrid yelled.

Hagrid had warned them just in time, because while they had been staring at the castle, the boats had approached the cliff without slowing down and were now heading into a wide cave, hidden by a curtain of ivy. The boats carried them along a dark tunnel, and as far as Harry could tell, they were soon directly beneath the castle. When they came to an underground harbor of sorts, they surged rather haphazardly out of the boats and onto the shore.

“Oy, you there! Is this your toad?” Hagrid asked as he checked the boats for stragglers and dropped items.

“TREVOR!” came Neville’s blissful scream. He held out his hands to take the toad, and his newly dry eyes became wet once again.

Hagrid had begun walking again, and the students followed the light from his lamp up a walkway that put them out onto smooth grass a stone’s throw from the castle. Hagrid walked up a short flight of stone steps, then turned around and asked, “Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?” before giving the enormous oak doors three loud knocks.


	7. The Sorting Hat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AN, 30May2016:**  
>  I'm un-abandoning this fic, but the end of this chapter needs some changes to make it work moving forward. I'll add another note when the changes have been made.  
>  **AN, 3Oct2017:**  
>  The changes have been made. I'm going to pick this back up soon.

The doors opened to reveal a tall witch with charcoal black hair and a stern face. She was wearing emerald green robes, and carried herself in such a way that Harry made the immediate decision to do whatever he could to keep from getting on her bad side.

“The firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,” said Hagrid.

“Thank you, Hagrid, I will take them from here,” she replied, and opened the door the rest of the way.

The entrance hall was so massive that Harry tried to imagine the Dursleys’ house inside it, and found to his surprise that it fit rather neatly, even roomily. The ceiling was higher than Harry could see in the waning evening light, but the torches along the walls illuminated a marble staircase more impressive than any he had seen.

The students followed Professor McGonagall across the flagstone floor and into a small empty chamber off the hall. Harry could briefly hear the rest of the school talking behind a large doorway to their right, before he, too, was shuffled into the room.

When the students were all in, and standing rather closer than many of them would have liked, Professor McGonagall broke their nervous silence.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” she said in a voice that was decidedly warmer than Harry would have expected. “The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.

“The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, after the four founders of our school. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while rulebreakers will cost their house points. The house with the most points at the end of the year is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.

“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”

Harry gave his hair a nervous pat-down before realizing that her gaze had lingered not on him, but on Neville, whose cloak was decidedly crooked, and on Ron, whose nose was sporting a rather large spot of dirt that Harry hadn’t noticed before.

“I shall return when we are ready for you,” said Professor McGonagall. “Please wait quietly.”

She left the chamber, and Harry gave a rough swallow.

“How exactly do they sort us?” He asked no one in particular.

“Beats me,” said a blond boy Harry hadn’t met yet. It can’t be any sort of aptitude test, since that wouldn’t exactly be fair to those of us who had no idea that magic even existed a few months ago.  Maybe it’s a personality battery of some sort?”

“Should have known you were a mudblood, with the way Weasley was talking to you on the train,” came Draco’s snide voice. “Now I _know_ you’ll be in-“

“-whatever house fits me best, I’m sure,” the boy replied coolly, cutting Draco off. “Besides, just because you have eleven years of immersion that I don’t doesn’t mean anything. I doubt you’ve done any more studying than I have, which means we may as well be starting from the same point. The difference is, you’re the one bragging, so you’re the one who’s going to look like an egg when I get better marks than you.”

Draco seemed to be trying to disappear amidst the chorus of stifled giggles, but between Crabbe, Goyle, and his bright silver hair, he was still quite easy to spot.

“Whatever house I get, I hope it’s not Slytherin. That’s the one he wants,” Harry told the boy who had put Draco in his place.

“Don’t let him spoil it for you,” the boy advised. “They can hardly put all the nasty people in one house, can they? The point system wouldn’t hold any value to them. I’m sure there are less-than-perfect people in all the houses. Who knows, Malfoy may not even be among them. After all, some people just don’t do well with first impressions. I’m Justin, by the way. Justin Finch-Fletchley.”

“Harry Potter. Nice to meet you.”

“So it’s you, is it?” Justin said. “I’d heard you were on the train, but I don’t know why people cared. From what Ron told me, you were a baby who got lucky when wizard-Hitler showed up at your house or something. I figure even if you took him out yourself, there’s no way you remember it, and everyone already knew how old you are, so what’s the big deal about you starting school?”

Harry felt a rush of relief that he had finally met someone who seemed to understand his desire to not be famous, even without being told, and was about to tell Justin this, when several people behind him screamed. Harry could have sworn he heard Draco’s voice among them, but by the time he had looked, Draco was standing with his arms crossed and had a crooked grin on his face.

Harry then noticed what had caused the commotion; streaming through the back wall were about twenty ghosts. They appeared to be ignoring the first-years entirely as they talked, but the gesture was anything but mutual as their way was cleared by several dozen terrified eleven-year-olds.

Harry, who was by this point inundated against any amount of shock, was intrigued by an argument two of the semitransparent white figures were having.

“Forgive and forget, I say. We ought to give him a second chance,” said the ghost of a short fat monk.

“My dear Friar, haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name, and he’s not even really a ghost, you know,” replied a woman who reminded Harry of a dead Mrs. Figg.

At that moment, they were interrupted by the ghost of a tall man in a ruff and tights. “I say, what are you all doing here?”

Nobody answered. If their thoughts were anything like Harry’s, everyone else was wondering that same thing.

“New students!” cried the Fat Friar, jumping excitedly from foot to foot in the air and causing his translucent belly to wobble. “About to be Sorted, I suppose?”

There were a few murmurs of agreement, but most of the first years were still either terrified by the ghosts or offput by the Friar’s enthusiasm.

“Hope to see you in Hufflepuff! My old house, you know!”

Just then, Professor McGonagall’s voice cut through the tension in the room. “Move along now,” she said sharply. “The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start.”

When the ghosts had all floated off through the wall opposite the one they had come through. Professor McGonagall instructed the first years to form a line and follow her.

Harry felt like his legs had suddenly been coated in several sheets of plastic wrap that were making it hard to move and cutting off a bit of circulation. He got in line behind Neville, reasoning that perhaps if the other boy messed up, he would look competent by comparison, and Justin filed in behind him. Panic filled Harry’s thoughts as they walked into the Great Hall.

Harry’s first thought as they entered was that the place in which he was standing couldn’t possibly be real; it was more fantastical than anything he had ever imagined. There were four long tables down the length of the Hall, and a fifth that was clearly the head table crossed it at the far end. Professor McGonagall led the first years up to stand in front of it, facing the other students. Hundreds of faces stared back at Harry as he looked out into the hall, and he hoped with all his might that they were staring at all of the first years and not just him.

Harry looked up to take his mind off the fact that he was currently a spectacle, and was made slightly dizzy by the fact that the hall appeared to have no ceiling. Just as he was wondering how that could possibly be a good idea, he heard Hermione’s unmistakably brash voice whisper to another first year that the ceiling was enchanted to look like the sky outside, followed by the title of the book in which she had read that fact.

Harry looked back down when he heard a slight click, and saw Professor McGonagall placing a four-legged stool in front of them, on which sat a ratty old wizard’s hat with several rips and patches. It looked as though it had been attacked by a garden gnome and stomped into a vegetable patch.

When Professor McGonagall stepped back and looked at the hat expectantly, Harry began to panic in earnest. Clearly this hat had something to do with the sorting. Were they supposed to clean it? Pull a rabbit out of it? Make it sing?

It started to sing:

 _Oh, I may be old and ratty_  
_And I may be ripped and torn,_  
_But I can tell you truly,_  
_Smarter clothes were never worn._  
_No three-piece suit could match me;_  
_No flowing dress compare,_  
_For I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,_  
_And I see more than hair._  
_I see your true potential._  
_I see your hopes and fears._  
_I see the values of your heart._  
_It’s all between your ears._  
_Just put me on your head and I’ll_  
_Tell you where you belong._  
_Put faith in me, for not once has_  
_The Sorting Hat been wrong._  
_You might belong in Gryffindor._  
_They’re headstrong but they’re bold;_  
_They stand by what they think is right_  
_No matter what they’re told._  
_In Hufflepuff you may find home._  
_They’re quiet but they’re fair;_  
_You work hard and stay loyal,_  
_And you won’t have a care._  
_Or Ravenclaw could be your nest._  
_They’re quirky but they’re quick;_  
_If you can help discussion flow,_  
_Then you and they will click._  
_It could be you’re a Slytherin:_  
_Elitist, but with cause;_  
_Their talent, set upon a task,_  
_Invariably awes._  
_So come on, put me on your head!_  
_I haven’t teeth to bite!_  
_I am the sharpest hat there is,_  
_And I will Sort you right!_

The first years issued a collective sigh of relief as the rest of the hall exploded into cheers.

“When I see Fred I’m going to kill him,” Harry heard Ron mutter to Neville. “He told me we had to wrestle a troll.”

Harry managed a slight smile to himself, but he felt awfully exposed at the thought of the whole school watching him try on a hat that knew everything he was thinking. And then there was the matter of which house he would be in. He didn’t feel particularly brave or smart, and he certainly didn’t consider himself talented enough to be among the elite, but neither Draco nor Hagrid had had anything nice to say about Hufflepuff. It did seem the best fit for him though, now that he knew a bit more. Harry felt like he just wanted to disappear, and he wouldn’t have denied anyone else the same opportunity. That sounded “quiet but fair,” he thought.

Professor McGonagall stepped forward and unrolled a long sheet of parchment. She then told them to step forward and try on the hat when their name was called, and began calling roll.

“Abbot, Hannah!”

A girl with blonde pigtails and a face so pink she must have been as nervous as Harry stepped forward and put on the hat, which fell to below her nose.

“HUFFLEPUFF!” it shouted from a large rip near the brim, prompting cheers from the table to the far right. It suddenly occurred to Harry that the same rip must have been the mouth through which it had sung its song.

“Twenty-five points to Hufflepuff for the first Sort of the year!” called a man’s voice from behind Harry. He turned and saw the wizard who had vanished from his chocolate frog card standing in front of a high- backed chair at the center of the head table and wearing deep purple robes that looked to be quite heavy.

Professor Dumbledore sat down, and Harry turned back around just in time to see Professor McGonagall finish rolling her eyes slightly before continuing.

“Bones, Susan!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!” the hat proclaimed again as Susan hastily put it back on the stool and ran off to sit next to Hannah.

“Boot, Terry!”

“RAVENCLAW!” was the hat’s verdict this time, and this time the second table from the left was the one to cheer.

“Brocklehurst, Mandy!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Brown, Lavender!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

The cheer that came from the far left table was so loud that Harry instinctively leaned away a bit. Harry had heard of school spirit, but the Gryffindors took it to a whole other level. Harry noticed that the twins who had helped him with his trunk were among the biggest culprits, along with a boy with dreadlocks below his chin, who appeared to be their best friend.

“Bulstrode, Millicent!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

Harry had expected a cacophony like the Gryffindors’ from the house the hat had described as elitist, but was surprised to instead hear the entire table shout together, as though it had been rehearsed, “MILLICENT BULSTRODE!”

Harry had been looking over each of the houses, and had been getting the impression that the Slytherins weren’t the nicest sort of people, but after that display of solidarity, he decided to wait and see.

“Crabbe, Vincent!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“VINCENT CRABBE!”

As Harry’s name drew closer, he began to feel sick to his stomach. At his old school, no one had ever wanted Dudley to think they liked Harry, and had refused to pick him accordingly. This felt a little too similar for Harry’s liking.

“Finch-Fletchley, Justin!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

 “Finnigan, Seamus!”

Almost a full minute passed before the hat shouted “GRYFFINDOR!”

Justin’s Sorting had been especially quick, and Harry wondered why some took longer than others.

“Goyle, Gregory!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“GREGORY GOYLE!”

“Granger, Hermione!”

Hermione jammed the hat down on her head with such enthusiasm that it ripped a little more, and it chuckled a bit before getting its revenge by yelling “GRYFFINDOR!” at twice its usual volume.

Ron groaned and punctuated it with an expletive under his breath.

Suddenly a worst-case scenario popped into Harry’s head. What if he didn’t get Sorted? What if he put the hat on and nothing happened? What if Professor McGonagall took him by the arm and removed the hat from his head and put it down and said there had been a mistake and told him that his things would meet him at the train station and that he had better go?

Harry forced himself to control his breathing.

“Neville Longbottom!”

The boy who kept losing his toad stumbled forward as if he had had to be pushed. He put on the hat and spent the entire time shaking his head violently until it declared “GRYFFINDOR!” at which point his shoulders slumped and he took off running to the Gryffindor table.

He then proceeded to slink back to the stool to put the hat back, among sniggers from the Slytherin table.

“MacDougal, Morag!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Malfoy, Draco!”

Draco strutted to the stool and began to put the hat on without bothering to sit, but before he had even finished placing it on his head, it proclaimed his wish granted as it shouted “SLYTHERIN!”

“DRACO MALFOY!” shouted the Slytherin table in unison as Draco sauntered over to take the seat Crabbe and Goyle had saved him between them.

There weren’t many people left before Harry, and he began to get a little hazy. He thought he heard “Moon” and “”Nott” and “Parkinson”, and there might have been some twins?

“Potter, Harry!”

The room was instantly silent.

Harry stepped forward, realizing that it was every bit as horrifying as he had expected. As the hat sank over his eyes, the faces craning to get a look at him suddenly all belonged to Aunt Petunia, and Harry froze in fear.

 _“That’s a nasty little memory you’ve got going on there,”_ said a voice in his head.

Harry jumped. “Who are you?” he demanded, but he could tell that his mouth hadn’t moved.

 _“Where to put you, where to put you…”_ the voice continued, ignoring him. _“You’ve got plenty of courage… a decent head on your shoulders… plenty of devotion to offer the right people... ah, but so much talent! You would do well in Slytherin, I think. But where to put you?”_

“Not Slytherin,” Harry suggested. He didn’t want to “go bad” as Hagrid had put it.

 _“Ah, but that’s the secondhand opinion of someone who wasn’t_ in _Slytherin, isn’t it? Your friend Rubeus Hagrid has a great many experiences that have absolutely no bearing on who you are or where you belong. I assure you, there were plenty of witches and wizards from all four houses that turned, but he only remembers the ones who made names for themselves. You have ambition, and Slytherin can teach you how to achieve it.”_

“I don’t though! I just want to be myself!” Harry insisted.

 _“You don’t seem to grasp how ambitious a goal that really is. Few people ever achieve it. If you’re going to make it happen, your best chance is in_ SLYTHERIN!” The hat shouted the last word to the school.

“HARRY POTTER!”

The Slytherins treated him to the exact same welcome they had given their other first years; no more, no less. Harry was so happy about this that he managed to ignore the disappointed sighs from the rest of the school as he was welcomed by Slytherin.

“Well would you look at that!” Draco said from across the table as Harry sat down. “I guess maybe there’s something to the Potter legend after all.”

Harry was so relieved to be done with the Sorting that he barely paid attention to the rest of the names, noticing only “Weasley, Ronald” because he had heard the name before, and the final name, which his housemates shouted in his ears: “BLAISE ZABINI!”

Professor Dumbledore stood again, and addressed the Hall as Professor McGonagall carried the sorting hat away. “Congratulations, all of you, on your new houses, and fifteen points to Slytherin for the final Sort of the year. Now before we begin the feast, I would like to say a few words. Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!”

As the headmaster took his seat, Harry said to no one in particular, “He’s a bit mad, isn’t he?”

An older student to Harry’s right snorted. “Now that’s the most accurate first impression I’ve ever heard. Name’s Higgs, by the way. Terence Higgs. And you are?”

Oh, sorry, I expected you would have recognized me, what with the shouting my name and all,” quipped Harry. “I’m Harry Potter.”

Terence laughed. “You’ll fit in fine around here, Potter, don’t worry. Potatoes?”

Harry looked down in shock and had to remind himself to close his mouth. The empty dishes that had lined the table a moment before were now piled with roasts and chops of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and others that Harry didn’t recognize, as well as bacon, three different cuts of steak, seven varieties of sausage, and personal sized steak-and-kidney pies. There were boiled, baked, and mashed potatoes with gravy, a dozen different vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, and fries with ketchup and mustard. It was more food than Harry had ever seen in one place, and certainly more than he’d ever had for himself. It was more than even the Dursleys could have eaten if they’d been starving for a week and wanted to make Harry feel bad to boot. Harry noticed Goyle on the other side of the table grabbing mercilessly at everything he could reach, and Terence smacked his hand.

“You’d better be glad I’m not a prefect,” he said, “or I’d have already had to take some of the points we just made. Now eat like a human being, would you?”

Goyle sheepishly picked up his fork. "Sorry, Terrence," he said.

"It’s Higgs. I would have expected you to know better, Goyle, considering who your father is. Starting next year, you can address younger students however you please, but in Slytherin we use family names for our elders. As for your peers, you’ll have to work that out with them individually.”

Malfoy smacked Goyle on the back of the head. Harry tried to hide his grin as he piled his plate with some of everything, but he couldn't help making a show of properly using the serving utensils. He groaned with pleasure as he took the first bite of steak he'd ever had that wasn't burned.

“That looks delicious, but you needn’t proclaim confirmation of the fact to the world,” said a deep raspy voice behind Harry that made him jump.

Harry turned to see a noble looking ghost with horrifyingly empty eyes and a skeletal face, whose clothes were stained with silver blood and draped with heavy chains.

“So you mean you can’t eat?” Harry asked. There was a noise that sounded like Draco smacking himself in the forehead.

“Not in almost a thousand years,” the ghost replied.

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, and instead said the first thing that came to his mind. “How’d you get covered in blood?” he asked. There was that smacking sound again.

“How’d you get that scar?” the ghost fired back without missing a beat.

“Uhh… I actually don’t remember it,” muttered Harry.

“Then I actually don’t remember either,” the ghost said with finality. “Now, if we’re done asking inappropriately personal questions, I believe introductions are overdue. I am the Bloody Baron, Slytherin House Ghost. You may address me as ‘Baron’ if you wish, but if I get word that you have been calling me ‘BB,’ I will give Peeves explicit instructions to target only you for a week. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said every Slytherin student within earshot as the Baron floated away down the table.

Harry turned back around to continue eating, and was met with Draco’s face, which held a look of both begrudging respect and flabbergasted pity, an expression that was reflected to varying degrees in the faces of the other students.

“I don’t know whether to shake your hand or slap you in the face with it,” said Higgs. “To my knowledge, no one has ever had the stones to ask that before.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked. He hadn’t been deliberately brave, and felt like being slapped with his own hand would have been the more appropriate course of action.

"That stunt you pulled asking the Baron about his bloodstains. You must be incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.”

“I didn’t-“ Harry began, but Higgs wasn’t done.

“Either way, I’ve got to hand it to you,” he continued. “When the Hat put you in Slytherin, I knew you’d be wanting to make a name for yourself, but I didn’t think there was any way you could do it, what with your already being famous. Not only did you prove me wrong and cause a stir, you’ve done it before we’ve even finished eating!”

“But I-“ Harry tried again to explain that none of that was true, but to no avail.

“Anyway, finish eating,” said Higgs. “Dessert’s coming soon.”

Harry was suddenly very interested in his Yorkshire pudding (which was promptly replaced with a treacle tart), and did his very best to avoid drawing any more attention to himself for the rest of the meal. As Harry began to feel content for among the first times in his life, he looked up to the Head Table and saw Professor Quirrell arguing with the teacher sitting beside him. The wizard was tall, with a large hooked nose, dark robes, and straight black hair that fell to his shoulders. The man made brief eye contact with Harry, and a sharp pain went through Harry’s scar, and he clapped his hand to his forehead.

“Ok, Potter?” asked Draco.

“I’m fine,” said Harry. The pain had already disappeared, but Harry got the distinct impression that the teacher strongly disliked him.

“Ter- I mean, Higgs,” said Harry, correcting himself, “who’s that talking to Professor Quirrell?”

“When did you meet Quirrell?” Higgs asked. “Never mind; unimportant. That’s Professor Snape. He’s Slytherin’s Head of House. He’s taught Potions for years, but he’s got his eye on Quirrell’s job.”

“Why’s he want to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Harry asked.

“Probably just more fun,” said Higgs. There’s an awful lot of waiting around involved in mixing potions, especially compared to the quick reflexes you need for self-defense. There’s also a rumor that he used to be a Death Eater, but whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, so long as it means other houses are less likely to cross us.”

Harry felt overwhelmed. There was clearly a lot more to the inter-house relationships than he had realized, and he was being faced with unfamiliar words again.

“Sorry,” he asked, “but what’s a Death Eater?”

“Wow,” said Higgs. “You really have no idea, do you?”

“No,” said Harry, who was beginning to be annoyed by everyone’s tendency to ask that. “That’s why I asked.”

“Hey, relax. I didn’t mean anything by it,” said Higgs, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “Death Eaters were You-Know-Who’s elite soldiers; his vanguard. They were the Aurors’ biggest threat in the Dark Times.”

Harry was getting tired of hearing words he didn’t know used so casually. “Aurors?” he asked, then “You-Know-Who?”

“Aurors are dark wizard hunters that work for the government,” said Higgs. “As for You-Know-Who… You really don’t know? He’s the one who gave you that scar.”

Harry looked Higgs straight in the eye. “Did he use a knife or something?”

Higgs’s mouth dropped open for a moment, before he burst out laughing. “You got me good, Potter. Nicely done.”

With that, the food vanished from the tables and the hall fell silent as Professor Dumbledore got to his feet.

“Now that our bellies are fuller and our minds hopefully a bit emptier than they were, I have a few start-of-term notices to give,” he said. “Firstly, that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to students. This is likely news to the first years, but a few older students would be well-advised to remember this as well.” His eyes flashed toward the Gryffindor table, but Harry couldn’t tell whom exactly he meant.

“Secondly, a reminder from our caretaker, Mr. Filch, that the use of magic is not allowed in the corridors between classes. Thirdly, Quidditch trials will be during the second week of the term. Contact Madam Hooch if you are interested in playing for your house team. Finally, I regret to inform you that the third-floor corridor on the right hand side is out of bounds this year, on penalty of brutally painful death.”

Harry began to laugh, but stopped when he realized that no one else around him was doing the same. “Surely he’s not serious?” he asked Draco.

“No way of knowing. The old coot’s never been the most competent. My father says he’s the worst thing that ever happened to this school.”

“And now, before we retire,” continued Dumbledore, “let us sing the school song!” He gave his wand a flick, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it and shaped itself into words. “Everyone pick your favorite tune, and off we go!”

Harry had never heard anything quite like the cacophony that followed. Nearly every person in the hall had chosen a different melody for the song, and everyone was singing at a different speed, but the golden ribbon somehow seemed to stay in time with everyone as it spelled out:

 _Hogwarts, Hogwarts, hoggy warty Hogwarts,_  
_Teach us something, please!_  
_Whether we be old and bald,_  
_Or young with scabby knees,_  
_Our heads could do with filling_  
_With some interesting stuff,_  
_For now they’re bare and full of air,_  
_Dead flies, and bits of fluff!_  
_So teach us things worth knowing,_  
_Bring back what we’ve forgot._  
_Just do your best, we’ll do the rest,_  
_And learn until our brains all rot!_

Unsurprisingly, the whole school finished the song at different times, ending with the twins that had helped Harry with his trunk at the station, who were chanting along to a funeral march from the Gryffindor table. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines for them, and clapped loudly when they had finished.

“Ah, music!” he exclaimed with tear-sparkled eyes. “It has a magic that puts all we do here to shame. Bedtime, now! Off you go!”

“Slytherin first years, this way!” called a girl with broad shoulders and a squarish jaw. “My name is Farley. Gemma Farley. I’m a prefect, and I’ll lead you to our common room.” Harry, Draco, and the others followed her out of the Great Hall and down several flights of stairs to the dungeons, stopping abruptly at what appeared to be an arbitrary point along a stone corridor.

“This is the entrance to our common room,” she said briskly. “You would do well to remember where it is, but you are not to mark it for yourself. We don’t want anyone else knowing where it is. The password changes every two weeks, and is posted on the bulletin board inside. The first one is ‘venom.’”

As she spoke the final word, Harry expected something to happen, but nothing did.

“As you can see, if you get lost, it won’t help to just run down the corridor shouting the password. You must come to this specific wall, lean in, and whisper,” she said. “ _Venom_.”

There was a low rumbling, surprisingly quiet, as the wall slid open to reveal a room more lavish than any Harry had seen. He found himself stepping into a room that was almost as big as the Dursleys’ entire house, and quite a bit warmer than Harry had expected from the corridor outside. It had vaulted ceilings two and a half stories high, with intricate chandeliers hanging from them, shining prismatic patterns of silver light gently over everything in the room. There were low-backed sofas all around, made of intricately carved ebony and upholstered in green velvet with bright silver embroidery. In the fireplace, a magically green fire roared (or should have at that size, though it was silent), surrounded by a handful of oversized armchairs, each in the same style as the sofas. The real surprise came when Harry looked up at the far end of the giant room. What Harry had taken for a curved wall that arched up to become the ceiling was actually a huge domed window that revealed them to be directly under the lake they had crossed in the boats.

Farley gave the first years a long moment to get their bearings and then addressed them again.

“I’m sure you’re all tired from a long day, but there are a few more things to take care of, specific to Slytherin traditions,” she said. “By now, even those of you who don’t come from wizarding families will no doubt know that Slytherin has a bit of a reputation, namely that to cross us is ludicrous. Part of that stems from awful stereotypes, but we choose to use that to our advantage, rather than deny it. The greater part, however, comes from the tradition I’m about to explain. Every first year Slytherin is paired up with a fifth year mentor, and the two remain paired until the elder graduates. Fourth years are then on their own for a year, before being tasked to mentor a first year of their own. We will now assign you your mentors, and then you may go to bed.” She gestured to her right, where the fifth years were lined up against the wall in front of the bulletin board Farley had mentioned. They had been standing (with the exception of one boy in a wheelchair) so quietly and still that Harry hadn’t noticed them. They stepped forward as one and held their wands upright.

Farley gave her wand a twirl and a bolt of greenish silver silk shot from it. It twisted in the air before segmenting itself, and each piece wrapped itself around the tip of one of the fifth years’ wands.

“You will now step forward one at a time and place your wand on this pedestal,” said Farley, conjuring one as she said it. “Your mentor will then be revealed.”

When Farley looked at the first years expectantly, it became clear that this process was not going to be done by name, as the Sorting had been, and they scurried into a line. Harry placed himself near the middle, but was unsurprised to see Draco elbow a strong-looking girl out of the first spot in line before placing his wand on the plinth.

“ _Detego mentoris,_ ” said Farley.

At once, Draco’s wand began to spin, then stopped just as suddenly and released a beam of green light that ignited the silk on the wand of one of the fifth year girls. “Draco Malfoy, my name is Ersa Carrow,” she said with gravity, gently picking up his wand in both hands, “and for the next three years you are in my charge.” She handed it to him, then burst out laughing at his terrified expression. “Oh, come on, I’m not that scary, am I?” she giggled. Her voice was smooth and rich, but something in the twinkle of her eye made Harry suspect that Draco was in perfectly capable hands that would defend him quite viciously if needed.

The girl Draco had elbowed out of line stepped forward and put her wand on the plinth.

“ _Detego mentoris_ ,” Farley said again, and the girl’s wand spun, then came to a stop and ignited the wand of the boy in the wheelchair. He would have been short in stature even with the use of his legs, but his arms and shoulders rippled under his robes.

“Chuck Gibson,” he said, rolling forward to meet the girl once his wand had gone out. “Nice to meet you…?”

“Millicent Bulstrode,” replied the girl.

“Awesome. I’ll show you to the dorms.

This continued for about fifteen minutes, over the course of which Harry slowly made his way to the back of the line. If there was a worst mentor to get, Harry supposed he deserved to be the one to get them. Soon, there was only one first year left ahead of him: a tall, scrawny boy named Theodore Nott, who was paired with Chuck Gibson’s twin sister Caroline.

“ _Detego mentoris_ ,” Farley repeated one last time as Harry put his wand on the plinth. It spun, and when it came to a stop amid a chorus of disappoinment, Harry wondered why there were so many more fifth years than first years.

“I was worried I wouldn't get a mentee,” said a familiar voice. “I guess I shouldn’t have been, huh, Harry?”

Harry turned toward the voice and found himself looking at…

“Higgs!”

The older boy laughed. "No, your mentor is a special case; there's no formality between us. To you I’m Terry. Come on, let me show you the dormit-“

But Harry had already passed out on one of the sofas.


End file.
